Anything You Want by Derek Sivers - book of the week
📖Books
Today I had a pleasure of interviewing Derek Sivers for the upcoming 30th (wow!) issue of the Productive! Magazine so to prepare for this interview I decided to read again his fantastic book: “Anything You Want” which he published a few years back. I totally recommend it:
Derek and I share a similar story. Nope, I’m not a musician. No, I didn’t sell my business and I don’t intend to, but he and I started our businesses because we scratched our own itch. This book is all about what he’s learned running his business and I can relate a lot to these stories and there’s a wealth of good advice there:
Do what’s right for your customers and you’ll be fine
Not rocket science but still something many businesses don’t get. Customers first. All other stakeholders later. And if you have the luxury of owning your business and not having investors (like I do) you just have no excuse not to put your customers first.
Never forget that absolutely everything you do is for your customers. Make every decision—even decisions about whether to expand the business, raise money, or promote someone—according to what’s best for your customers.
Your company is your perfect world
That’s the thing. Just the other day we had an argument within my team about a policy we introduced earlier. Do I said: “if this policy doesn’t work for us, let’s stop arguing and let’s change it.” And we did. And it was good. This is how companies should be run, right?
When you make a company, you make a utopia. It’s where you design your perfect world.
No “yes.” Either “HELL YEAH!” or “no.”
That’s the thing. We agree to things we shouldn’t agree to, because something is OK. Our time is precious and we should agree only to things that totally excite us.
Every event you get invited to. Every request to start a new project. If you’re not saying “HELL YEAH!” about it, say “no.”
Derek’s book is kinda similar to my book: It’s All About Passion!
But he’s been through more than I have so you should totally check his book fist. It’s a great read and an amazing source of inspiration. Just the final quote I want to leave you with:
Set up your business like you don’t need the money, and it’ll likely come your way.
Anyway, I had a blast this morning interviewing Derek and I’m sure you’ll love listening to him talk about all this in the next issue of the Productive! Magazine
Question: Have you read Derek’s book? What did you learn from him?